The Loneliest Man on the Railway - The Victorian Signalman

‘Trains thundering by; nine bells dinning in the signal-box, one against another; a score of telegraph indicators before his eyes; three telephones behind him; and under his sure an powerful hands a row of levers, keys of life and death. I am to write the praise of the railway signalman.’[1]

The signalmen, the individuals who were the overseers of railway safety, were the loneliest employees in the Victorian railway industry. While those stationed in major signal boxes at large stations or yards would be in contact with many human beings, the majority of signalmen sat alone atop mountains, in cuttings and at junctions. Indeed, the signalmen were unique in the Victorian railways as being some of the only solo workers in an industry where human contact and interactions were common place.

This had always been the case from the earliest days of the railways. Stationed next to the primitive signals, the early signalmen inhabited boxes that were modelled on army sentry huts. Indeed, many were pivoted at the base so they could be turned against the elements. However, the standard signal box, that we would readily identify today, developed quickly complete with windows, stoves and occasionally cats.[2]

Most Victorian signalmen would start their careers by entering the company’s service at the age of 14 as either a porter (then being promoted to porter-signalmen) or as a signal learner. They would have to undergo a strict eye test and then would shadow the work of a permanent signalman until they were proficient. Subsequently, once qualified they would be placed in an unimportant or branch-line signal box. Career advancement would occur through the movement to signal boxes of greater importance, with the rare possibility that they would eventually end up in charge of a major box on the main line.

The pay of signalmen was quite low and dependent on the company may have been anywhere between 12s and 30s per week. However, the general rate was around 16s or 17s.[3] While a children’s publication, The Big Budget, would write in 1899 that ‘an ordinary signalman does not have a very great deal of actual hard work to do,’ it was the duration of the work and the lack of pay that was the real issue for these men.[4] A letter to the editor of the Railway Service Gazette in 1872 detailed the long hours of service of signalmen:

‘I myself am a signalman and have been in the employ of the London, Chatham and Dover Company for eleven years next June, during which time I have averaged eighty-four hours per week. As there are only two of us, we relieve each other on a Sunday morning at 8.30 am to change over from night to day. We remain on duty till 7.30 the following Monday so as to enable us to have twenty-three hours off duty once a fortnight…and to make things worse, if we are fortunate to get a week’s leave of absence (say once in two years) they do not fail to stop our pay.’[5]

Indeed, while testifying to the Parliamentary Select Committee of 1890, James Thomas, a Cambrian Railway signalmen, stated that the hours of work that he had been expected to work were unlimited, there was no Sunday pay, and on occasion he had worked eighteen consecutive hours. Furthermore, he only time and a quarter for those hours worked after the twelfth.[6]

While the hours and pay of the signalmen were improved over the late-Victorian period, usually by union activity, the one problem they were unable to solve was that of their isolation. The signalmen themselves tried to mitigate this problem by keeping their boxes in pristine condition, through cleaning the instruments, making sure the paint work was fresh and the flower boxes, for which there were competitions, were well-tended. Indeed, the signal box was the man inside’s territory, and no one entered without his say-so. Furthermore, signalmen would keep in contact through a series of bells with their colleagues on the line. Yet, these relationships were ones in which they never saw each other. Yet, the tedium of isolation still remained, and the adage developed that ‘if you are unmarried when you take over a box, chances are you will never marry.’[7]

It was this isolation that Charles Dickens used to great effect in his 1866 short ghost story The Signalman. The narrator visits a signalman at an isolated signal box in a cutting, only to find him haunted by a spectre that was appearing in association with two tragedies. Pertinently, on the narrator’s second visit to the box, the signalman sees the spectre again and believes may be warning of a third accident. However, the narrator cannot see it and, thus, one of the suggestions for this is that the signalman had suffered mentally from his isolation. When the narrator visits for a third time, he has found that signalman was been killed by a train while looking at something at the tunnel mouth. Whether the spectre had been warning the signalman of his impending doom during the last conversation is left for the reader to decide.

Thus, the isolation was the key to making The Signalman work as a story. In 1882 a lighter side to the isolation of the signalman was published in Fun. Thus, the publication’s whimsical poem, The Neglected Signalman, can be found below.[8]

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[1] Snowden, Keighley, ‘The Man Who Works the Points,’ The Pall Mall Magazine, Vol. 39 No. 166 (Feb 1907) p.169

[2] McKenna, Frank, The Railway Workers 1830-1970, (London, 1980) p.67

[3] McKenna, The Railway Workers 1830-1970, p.67

[4] The Big Budget, ‘The Road to Take: Or What a Boy Can Become,’ Saturday, July 15^th 1899, Issue 109, p.79

[5] Letter to the Editor, Railway Service Gazette, 3^rd February 1872, p.7, quoted in, McKenna, The Railway Workers 1830-1970, p.67-68

[6] McKenna, The Railway Workers 1830-1970, p.70

[7] McKenna, The Railway Workers 1830-1970, p.75

[8] ‘The Neglected Signalman,’ Fun, Vol.35 No.872 (Jan 25^th 1882) p.41

‘Crabbed, morose and irritable’ - One Liverpool Man's Complaints Against the L&NWR in 1867

Complaining about the Britain’s railways is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, I have seen many complaints about many railways in my studies of the Victorian railway industry. However, never have I seen a catalogue of complaints as long as those presented by ‘A CONTRACTOR’ in the Liverpool Mercury in late 1867. Starting on the Monday October 21^st and ending on Tuesday December 10^th, this man levelled in six parts a sustained attack on the London and North Western Railway’s (L&NWR) services in and around Liverpool.

He had, some years previous to his letters, become a commuter travelling the ‘eight or nine miles’ between Huyton Quarry and Liverpool daily. He believed this would be a quicker and more comfortable way to travel than the omnibus. But it soon became the bane of his existence, stating, ‘I dread it with increasing and absorbing dread.’ He felt he was increasingly becoming ‘crabbed, morose and irritable’ and that he was ‘now thrown into a tremor by the slightest incident.’ He concluded that he attributed the change in his disposition to the ‘vexatious, annoying and nerve destroying influences to which I am daily subject in my travels to and from Liverpool.’ Indeed, he argued that the L&NWR ran the line as it had been done when it was opened by the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830.[1]

Naturally, I cannot go into all of the individuals’ complaints. However, I will touch on the main ones. The first, which brought on his nerves, was his fear of being killed. He stated that in his commute over the years ‘four persons have been mangled and mutilated to death by trains in which I have travelled.’ But furthermore, he stated that while directors allowed ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds to be found for shortening the distance to London by two or a dozen miles,’ narrow stations were left dark at night where ‘people [may] tumble off and be killed,’ and level crossings ‘on the line must be abolished’ as many an accident or ‘near-miss had occurred. Thus ‘neither decent accommodation is given to those who use the railway, nor proper protection to those who are obliged to cross it.’[2]

It was in the second letter, of October 29^th, that our letter-writer began to attack the quality of the L&NWR’s stations. He started, with his home station of Huyton Quarry which he argued ‘might be a station in Chancery, so out-of-elbows does it look, or belong to some bankrupt company, who could not afford a few pounds to put in a tolerably descent condition.’ He complained that the station house could do with a spot of paint, but quickly moved onto its accommodation. He stated that at one end of it was ‘a dirty, dismal, low-pitched den which serves the double purpose of booking office and waiting room,’ and measured only 12ft by 8ft. One half was ‘appropriated by the officials, and the remainder is generously accorded to the public.’ The room was unpainted, there was a ‘fusty’ odour and there was a small ‘settle’ (fireplace) where in the winter months the room’s ‘occupants are ingeniously roasted by the fire on one side and exposed on the other to cold blasts.’

Outside station house was what he called ‘a semblance of a platform,’ that he asserted was never completed, becoming at one end ‘small by degrees and beautifully less’ until the level of the line is reached.’ Thus, when alighting the train at one of the platform he had the task of jumping down from the carriage. Lastly, the L&NWR had put up a ‘convenience in a position where it is overlooked without any pretence at concealment at all, by any person passing along one of the public roads,’ for which the drainage was no more than a ‘few wisps of straw.’[3] While complaining about Huyton Quarry Station at length, he also stated that he had heard of other deficient facilities elsewhere and frequently ‘compared notes with fellow travellers.’[4]While it won’t be related here, he related at length the dire facilities at Roby, Broadgreen, Edgehill [5] and Liverpool Lime Street Stations.

Indeed, at the Lime Street Station the ‘CONTRACTOR’ complained about how trains were brought out of the station because of the incline through the tunnel outside it. Firstly, a train was drawn by locomotive to the tunnel’s mouth. The locomotive would ‘go onto one line’ and proceed to the other end of the tunnel, while the carriages would remain on the original line. A rope was then attached to the front of the carriages and a steam engine at the Edgehill end of the tunnel would haul them up the incline to be reunited with the locomotive. Following on from this, he also detailed how trains were let down the incline. A break van was attached to the front of the train with the rope attached behind. The train was then allowed to freewheel down the incline with a breakman steadying its speed by judiciously applying the break. Overall, he argued that ‘is it not disgraceful that in these days of mechanical contrivances human life should be at the mercy of such primitive devices.’ Furthermore, with these procedures taking between ‘5 and 25 minutes,’ our author complained that no light penetrated the carriages and, thus, he was in a pitch-dark carriage with ‘persons whom you do not know and cannot see,’ a position which he felt perilous for all the obvious reasons.[6]

While I have not highlighted all of the author’s complaints, it is clear who he blamed for these deficient aspects of the L&NWR’s service: ‘the directors who rule the roost at Euston-square.’ Interestingly, the author framed his complaints in terms of the North-South divide, asserting on many occasions that services and facilities in the south were superior, and that directors could find money for improvements or railway empire-building when they required. Indeed, he stated, over the issue of level crossings that ‘I believe that the Liverpool members of the board have endeavoured to bring about some improvements, but that they are out-voted by the London interest,’ [7] and this comment is indicative of a feeling that runs through the correspondence. I cannot be certain whether his assertions as to the state of the line, with the exception of the practices at Lime Street, were strictly true. But it is certain that he felt the north-south divide and the distance of the L&NWR directors from Liverpool, affected how they implemented policy there.

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[1] Liverpool Mercury, Monday, October 21, 1867; Issue 6156

[2] Liverpool Mercury, Monday, October 21, 1867; Issue 6156

[3] Liverpool Mercury, Tuesday, November 12, 1867; Issue 6175

[4] Liverpool Mercury, Thursday, November 21, 1867; Issue 6183

[5] Liverpool Mercury, Thursday, November 28, 1867; Issue 6189

[6] Liverpool Mercury, Thursday, November 28, 1867; Issue 6189

[7] Liverpool Mercury, Monday, October 21, 1867; Issue 6156

It's Who Knows You - Promotion Amongst Victorian Railway Clerks

Britain’s railways have two stories that run like a thread through them. On the one hand, there were the events that took place in the head offices and amongst senior managers that shaped what actually happened on the railways. On the other, there were the myriad of stories that played out at stations, yards and on trains around the network amongst railway employees. Therefore, the role of the railway historian is to either choose to focus on one aspect of these tales, or, to look at their interaction.

This fact was brought to mind when, on visiting the National Railway Museum’s (NRM) archive on Monday, I looked at a book by W. Buckmaster called Railway Reminiscences. Produced after his retirement in 1937, this small pamphlet detailed his career as a member of the clerical staff of the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) and his subsequent rise into management. Indeed, it was his management activities that consistently brought to my mind the diary of another L&SWR clerk, Sam Fay (Shown), which I have in my possession. What was interesting was that Buckmaster showed how senior managers approached the promotion of clerks within the company, while Fay’s diary starkly detailed the strains, pressures and hopes that clerks had while trying to gain these promotions. Thus, what I have now is a view of promotion amongst the L&SWR’s clerical staff from those being promoted and those doing promoting.

Buckmaster started his L&SWR career in 1875 when he became a clerk in the company’s Goods Department. After spending seven years at what he called his ‘home station,’ he then became a clerk at a ‘busy goods depot’ for another seven. He then spent three years as a relief clerk, was posted at the Superintendent of the Line’s office in around 1892 and was appointed ‘Chief of the Traffic Department Staff’ a few years later.

Thus, for the five years that Buckmaster was in this post he was the man who best understood the Traffic Department’s staff from a management perspective, gaining ‘a thorough insight’ into the staff’s ‘character, temperament, disposition etc.’ Thus, with such knowledge he was seemingly the one who had control over clerks’ career paths as it enabled him to ‘form an opinion as to their fitness and ability to undertake other and more responsible duties as and when vacancies occurred.’ Subsequently, he controlled ‘to a great extent their destinies.’[1] This suggests that single senior managers had the most say in who was promoted within the Traffic Department. Furthermore, the recommendations that these managers made as to who should be promoted were simply based on their subjective opinions of individuals’ suitability to fill vacancies.

But what about the process clerks went through in applying for jobs? While some were clearly approached directly to fill positions within the Traffic department by senior management, as Buckmaster himself was,[2] evidence from Sam Fay’s diary, written during his time as a clerk in Kingston, shows how the L&SWR’s clerical staff went about applying for positions (If you would like to know more about Fay’s life at the time see HERE.)

Firstly, within the company there was seemingly a network whereby individuals would acquire knowledge about vacancies, whether it were through letters, news stories or through word of mouth. Thus, on the 25th February 1878 Fay, who was looking to advance his career at this point, ‘asked Mr Pettit [the station master] on Friday if he had any objection to my applying for Queen's Road as I heard the Chief Clark was about to leave.’[3] Additionally, in April 1879 F. Mears, Agent at Bournemouth died. Such was the dissemination of this knowledge that Fay reported that there was ‘over 100 applications for the latter job.’[4] Of course, occasionally information regarding potential opportunities was received too late for vacancies to be applied for. When in November 1879 a vacancy came up at Reading, Fay applied. However, a Mr Goffe in the General Manager’s office replied to Fay’s application stating that ‘Stacey late agent at Midhurst had been appointed there.’[5]

However, what is evident from diary is that while there was an internal labour market, whereby individuals applied for jobs en masse and competed for vacant positions, a clerk’s chances were more likely to be shaped by the knowledge that those above them in the management hierarchy had. Indeed, this confirms Buckmaster’s assertion that senior managers were key to clerks’ promotional prospects. In October 1878 Fay ‘asked the governor his opinion about applying for vacancies caused by the opening of Holsworthy line.’ However, because Petit was ‘strongly against [him] applying,’ he gave up the idea.[6] Indeed, there is evidence that Station Agents had some sway over who left their stations and on the 25th February 1878 Fay ‘asked Mr Pettit on Friday if he had any objection to my applying for Queen's Road as I heard the Chief Clark was about to leave.’[7] Lastly, in August 1879 Fay himself went up to see the company’s General Manager, Archibald Scott, about a vacancy at Andover if ‘Lawrence goes to Midhurst.’[8]

Thus, Fay’s superiors, from his direct line manager, Petit, to the General Manager of the company, Scott, all played a part in advancing or holding his back is career. Therefore, within the late Victorian railway company, while competition for posts clearly existed, career advancement was more dependent on how superiors thought of individuals, how aware they were of them within the organisation, and their subjective opinion of their abilities. Indeed, this puts a ‘human’ element into the studies of social mobility within the Victorian railway, which have seemingly only seen career advancement as a logical outcome of good education and start-of-life opportunities. Indeed, this small study has shown that it wasn’t always what you knew or who you knew that got you advanced, rather, it was who knew you that sometimes did the trick.

[1] Buckmaster, W. Railway Reminiscences, (London, 1937), p.7
[2] Buckmaster, Railway Reminiscences, p.4
[3] William Fay Collection [WFC], Sam Fay's Diary, Monday, 25th February 1878
[4] WFC, Sam Fay's Diary, Tuesday, 22nd April 1879
[5] WFC, Sam Fay's Diary, Tuesday, 28th November 1879
[6] WFC, Sam Fay's Diary, Wednesday, 16th October 1878
[7] WFC, Sam Fay's Diary, Wednesday, 16th October 1878
[8] WFC, Sam Fay's Diary, Monday, 25th February 1878

The Magazine Adverts of British Railways after World War One

After World War One the railway companies of Britain were not in a good state. However, after four years of being overworked they were faced with an old problem returning. Between 1900 and 1914 the number of passengers and goods the railways conveyed had levelled off, after a period of massive growth between 1870 and 1900. Naturally, under the stresses and strains of the wartime environment the traffic on the railways had increased dramatically. However, as the after-effects of the conflict started to die down, they were faced with the traffic problems of the pre-war period returning. This fact was highlighted when I looked at issues of Railway Magazine from September and November 1919, and February 1921. In these magazines the railway companies advertised services that they hoped would contribute to alleviating the faltering growth in traffic.

The first thing of note is that the adverts can be divided into two categories. Firstly, there were those that advertise the passenger services that the companies provided, and, secondly, there were those in which they advertised space alongside the railways for businesses to set up.

Interestingly, adverts for the companies’ passenger services were limited in number in the 1919 editions, coming from the Underground and the The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR). The Underground advertised ‘The Services to the Countryside,’ referencing that they, and ‘allied services,’ could convey individuals to ‘the Northern Heights, the Southern Downs, the forests in the east, the wooded plains and river-side in the West are all served partly and daily but mostly at weekends.’[1]

The L&YR’s advert for ‘Summer Season’ traffic in 1919 wasn’t so much an advert, as it was a warning. In rather stern tones it stated that ‘All passengers to the Blackpool and Southport districts on Saturday, September 6th will be required to obtain their tickets in advance.’[2] Indeed, ‘Passengers from Blackpool and Stations to Lytham travelling to Preston and beyond on Saturdays and Mondays, up to and including September 15th, must obtain a special ticket authorising them to travel by a specific train.’ The reason for the these harsh rules is unclear, however, after the wartime conditions it is quite possible that the resources that the L&YR had at their disposal to marshal unexpected passengers was diminished and, therefore, the company wished to be able to plan their operations more carefully.

The small number of adverts advertising passenger services can possibly be put down to the fact that many men were still in uniform at this time and that they were unavailable to travel for leisure, and that wartime conditions for all were still in place. Furthermore, with passenger levels still buoyant given wartime conditions were mostly still in place, the railway companies perhaps did not feel the need to advertise their services in such a manner. However, by the February 1921 edition it is clear that the companies were now trying to capture passenger traffic that was being challenged by passengers moving to trams and the beginnings of motorcar ownership.

The Great Central Railway (GCR) was advertising their ‘Health and Holiday Resorts Guide.’ The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) were promoting their ferry services which, in their words provided ‘The shortest and most comfortable route to France, The Riviera, Switzerland, Italy, Pyrenees, Spain and All Parts of the Continent.’ The South, Eastern, Chatham and Dover Railway (SEC&DR) were doing the same, and were also claiming that they provided ‘the shortest sea routes to the continent.’[4] Indeed, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was also following suit, although its only claim was that it had ‘the most luxurious steamers between England and the continent,’ presumably because in no way could they argue they had ‘the shortest routes.’[5] Lastly, the L&YR was advertising its ‘Exchange Station Hotel, Liverpool,’ and was in its estimation the ‘nearest First Class Hotel to the Landing Stage, exchanges, and Principal centres of Business.’[6] Lastly, the Metropolitan Railway and the GCR were advertising housing developments near their railways where individuals could live, which would assure the railway companies of their patronage.

Throughout this period the railway companies were also trying to capture the more goods traffic through indirect means. In the all editions of Railway Magazine they advertised the lands adjoining or near to their lines that could be purchased by businesses. Some of their land was the companies’ own, but mainly they compiled registers which individuals could consult of those wishing to sell land or properties. The London and South Western Railway’s (L&SWR) notice stated that ‘if you require premises or land for business development, write giving particulars and we may be able to put you in touch with just what is wanted.’[7] Thus, in the September 1919 edition, the GCR, Midland and South Western Junction Railway, Kent and East Sussex Railway, East Kent Railway, Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway, Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway, GER, Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway, SE&CR, London & North Westen Railway, L&SWR and the Great Western Railways were all advertising these services.[8]

These advertising campaigns were logical for the railway companies to engage in, as by putting potential purchasers of land in touch with sellers who were close to the railways, they would keep business near the railways and capture the trade emanating from them. In addition, it allowed the railways to be far more aware of what businesses were in their operational sphere and they could than manage their requirements better. Of course, in the period before the war businesses would have naturally set up near railway lines as the railway companies dominated to freight transportation market. However after the war the expansion of road haulage firms, using sold-off ex-army vans, began to challenging the railways’ dominance in transport services. Thus, the adverts and the property registers were a way of counter-acting this new threat to their businesses.

Thus, in the post-war period (and at other times) what the railways advertised and how they went about it was shaped by what the state of the business environment they were operating in.

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[1] The Railway Magazine, September 1919, p.vi
[2] The Railway Magazine, November 1919, p.v
[3] The Railway Magazine, February 1921, p.ii
[4] The Railway Magazine, February 1921, p.iv
[5] The Railway Magazine, February 1921, p.vii
[6] The Railway Magazine, February 1921, p.vi
[7] The Railway Magazine, September 1919, p.vi
[8] The Railway Magazine, September 1919

When Railway Clerks Went to Work - The Entrance Age of Victorian Clerks

It is generally understood that in the late Victorian period most individuals started their railway careers shortly after leaving school. However, what is not so commonly recognised is that different employment practices were in place earlier in the period and many started their railway careers at later points in their lives. In this post I will examine the ages that clerks on the London and South Western Railway were appointed (L&SWR) to their first posts between 1840 and 1910. It should be noted, that I have also included in this study all cases where individuals were appointed to positions on the clerical career ladder, including junior clerks, chief clerks, goods agents and station agents.

The table below shows the age at which 200 clerks with surnames beginning with ‘A’ or ‘B’ were appointed to the company’s staff. Figures for the period 1880 to 1899 were unavailable as I have not photographed the records yet.

Of the 200 individuals in the sample, 148 (74%) were appointed under the age of 20. Thus, it can be inferred that majority of the clerks joined the company after leaving school. However, evidently, the likelihood that new clerks would be from this age group increased. So, in the 1840s only two new clerks, or 15.38%, of the 13 appointed in the decade were under 20. However, in the 1850s this proportion had risen to 29.63% (8 out of 27 appointed), in the 1860s it was 69.6% (39 out of 56 appointed) and in the 1870s it was 93.24% (69 out of 74 appointed). Lastly, after 1900, 100% of all new clerks were under the age of 20.

Conversely, the number of clerks of older ages declined. In the 1840s and 1850s the table shows that clerks were being appointed at a diverse range of ages. Indeed, in the 1840s 46.15% (6 out of 13 appointed) were appointed above the age of 30, and this had increased in the 1850s to 48.15% (13 out of 27 appointed). This would suggest that the majority would have had employment elsewhere beforehand, and this may have been in clerical positions either within other railway companies or other industries.

However, after 1860 the proportion of clerks appointed who were above 30 years of age declined. In the 1860s they constituted only 8.9% of all appointments (5 out of 56 appointed) and in the 1870s the proportion dropped to 2.70% (2 out of 74 appointed). Considering all clerks after 1900 were appointed in their teens, this indicates a change occurring in railway company employment practices over the period

In the early railways there were no railway professionals. Railway company managers, who had very little idea how to manage their new, but complex, businesses, looked to external sources to find the talented individuals needed to undertake the clerical and administrative work. Thus, while the L&SWR clearly did employ teenage individuals as clerks where available (possibly because they were cheaper), experience was a much more valued attribute at the time. However, as the L&SWR’s business matured and developed, it started to develop its own staff and turned less and less to external sources for labour. Indeed, the company increasingly opted for employing younger and younger individuals.

Thus, within the L&SWR was formed an ‘Internal Labour Market’ (ILM) whereby the company internalised a process, that of recruitment, that had previously occurred externally. The benefits of this for the company was that the cost of searching for labour was reduced and managers could be certain that the time taken training young clerks would not be wasted. For the clerks, the reduction in entrance ages meant that those entering the company later in its history would have far more structured careers ahead of them, good job security, the possibility of reaching management positions and, unless they did something wrong (and they did – see here), have employment for life.

When Victorian Beer Trains Crash

I was recently invited to the launch of the East Lancashire Railway’s ‘Real Ale Trail,’ where you can explore the pubs in and around the line. Unfortunately, and very sadly, I was unable to make it (but please go and see all about it HERE). However, it got me thinking about the interaction between the railways and breweries and how ale would be hauled from creator to consumer. Of course, much beer in the Victorian period was drunk in the local proximity of the brewery. Yet, while I am in no way a historical beer expert (a goal, for sure), the large breweries mass-produced beer for large markets in Britain and abroad and this was where the railways would play their part. After searching the online 19^th century newspapers I found eight stories between 1873 and 1896 about beer-trains, all involving accidents that occurred to them.

What is most interesting about the accidents was that six of the eight occurred on the Midland Railway. The other two took place on the Great Eastern Railway. The large number on the Midland was because of the many breweries in the Midland’s region, specifically around Burton. Indeed, all the Midland Railway's accidents occurred on trains going from that place. On the 4^th August 1888 a Midnight Goods train, mostly filled with beer, was prevented from erroneously passing onto the main line at Claycross by a slip point, allowing it to career down the embankment. It was going from Burton to Leeds.[1] Furthermore, in January 1883 a beer train being shunted to allow an express passenger train to pass was struck by a train of empty wagons going from Burton on the Leicester to Leeds line.[2]

Importantly, the accidents’ geographical locations evidence that mass-shipment of beer was not a nation-wide phenomenon in the late Victorian period and was restricted to the Burton region. Indeed, if there were other regions of Britain sending beer in such volumes, I’m sure that I would have found a larger geographical spread of accidents.

In addition, I initially thought that most of the accidents would be due to the weight beer causing damage to the trains, it being one of the heavier commodities the railways carried. However, only three accidents were of this nature. On the 7^th August 1873 a Great eastern Railway beer train on its way to Norwich was thrown off the line by a trucks's axle breaking.[3] In February 1881, a ‘Burton beer train’ near Leicester was ‘running at speed’ and broke in two. The forward section moved off, however, when it stopped the rear section careered into it smashing the wagons.[4]

What is more interesting is that when the beer trains did overturn or collide, their weights did cause considerable damage to the track. So, the Beer train to Norwich caused significant damage and held up the mail train by 4 hours. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper commented that ‘Alcohol can thus baffle her Majesty’s mail as well as her Majesty’s Government.’[5] When in 1881 near Bromsgrove the driver of the Birmingham to Bristol Beer train stopped it to check a broken coupling, an auxiliary train came up behind causing 10 vehicles to be thrown off the line. Four hours elapsed before trains were running again.

Luckily, no fatalities were caused in any of the accidents. However, a lot of beer went to waste, and that the real tragedy? In the 1888 Claycross accident the train on reaching the bottom of the embankment became submerged in a deep pool of water. Its length of the train was nine wagons and I can only surmise that they and their contents was lost.[7] The 1873 accident on the route to Norwich involved damage to some barrels that were ‘emptied onto the thirsty road.’[8] On 3^rd December 1896 a beer train from Burton to Leicester ‘struck the points’ and overturned. The result was that the barrels of beer were ‘scattered in all directions, and some were thrown with such violence that they were precipitated into a field adjoining the railway embankment.’[9] Lastly, at Bromsgrove in 1881, local fields were ‘deluged with beer.’[10]

Of course, not all the beer went to waste. On the 14^th January 1876 a train from Burton hit two stray horses on the line between Derby and Sheffield at Wingfield station. The force of the collision overturned to of the beer-laden wagons and threw the driver from the train. However, worse was to come and an oncoming mineral train collided with the wreck despite the driver’s attempt to warn it. In the course of these events several beer barrels were broken and the contents poured out. The York Herald recorded that this was ‘a circumstance which a number of colliers going to their work did not fail to notice, and had their early beer, good and plenty of it, on exceedingly good terms.’[11] All I can say was that this was a happy ending.

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[1] The York Herald, Saturday, September 08, 1888; pg. 4; Issue 11630

[2] The Pall Mall Gazette, Friday, January 26, 1883; Issue 5587

[3] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 10, 1873; Issue 1603

[4] Western Mail, Saturday, February 26, 1881; Issue 3682

[5] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 10, 1873; Issue 1603

[6] Nottinghamshire Guardian, Friday, October 21, 1881; pg. 7; Issue 1900

[7] The York Herald, Saturday, September 08, 1888; pg. 4; Issue 11630

[8] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 10, 1873; Issue 1603

[9] The Derby Mercury, Wednesday, December 9, 1896; Issue 9492

[10] Nottinghamshire Guardian, Friday, October 21, 1881; pg. 7; Issue 1900

[11] The Derby Mercury, Wednesday, December 9, 1896; Issue 9492.

When Two Transports Go To War - The Electric Fight-Back in the 1900s

In my last blog post (here) I talked about how the trams, which were spreading through the suburbs of Britain’s cities, began to challenge the railway’s dominance of suburban passenger traffic. The trams offered a more convenient, clean and cheaply priced door-to-door service than the railways’ somewhat inconvenient, overcrowded and dirty ones. In this blog post I will look at how Britain’s railway’s fought back against this threat.

This week, it will not have escaped anyone’s notice that South West Trains was having a very bad time due to failures in their electrified services. Signalling failures, cable theft and bad customer care created a perfect storm where the company looked very bad, even though the problems were not their fault. The electrified network that SWT currently operate was established by their predecessors, the London and South Western and Southern Railway (L&SWR) in direct response to the tram threat. However, if the L&SWR had pursued a different strategic course, and had adopted more widespread use of the steam railcar, then the problems encountered this week may never have materialised.

Steam railcars were effectively carriages powered by a small steam engine in their front (shown). In the L&SWR’s case the General Manager, Charles Owens, felt that the railcars could be used where the level of traffic did not require the use of a locomotive and carriage. Indeed, the L&SWR were using them on 18 routes by 1912 (although 3 had been discontinued by that point).[1] However, while not strictly a response to the tram threat, as many were used on small branch lines, some did migrate towards the suburban districts, and one service was run between Twickenham and Gunnersbury.

Yet, the L&SWR wasn’t the only company to build steam railcars. Indeed, after borrowing one of the L&SWR’s railcars for trials, and being suitably impressed, the Great Western Railway eventually ordered 99 to operate services on local lines.[2] Furthermore, other companies also built them and 173 are known to have been constructed before 1923.[3] Yet, the steam railcars could never effectively defend against the tram threat as they could only could carry limited numbers of passengers. Indeed, while some did have extra carriages attached to increase their capacities, one was always the maximum. Thus, while they looked like a more ‘modern’ way to travel, in reality they were a re-hash of old ideas.

Thus, some railway companies started to turn to electric traction to match the speed, comfort and cleanliness of the trams, and to make rail travel attractive again. Because of the large electrified network that existed on the southern suburban lines in the 1920s and 1930s, many authors have ignored the fact that initially electrification was a national movement. By 1890 there were a number of electric trains operating on piers, however, in the 1890s a number of standard-gauge suburban lines were opened including the City & South London Railway (1890), the Waterloo & City Railway (1898), the Central London Railways (1900) and the Liverpool Overhead Railway (1893). However, these were all new railways, built when the main line railway companies were still benefiting from rising passenger traffic figures and were not responses to any particular threat

Yet, with people deserting the trains to travel by tram, the railways started investigating electric traction. The Mersey Railway was electrified in 1903, the Lancashire and Yorkshire electrified its Liverpool to Southport route in 1904 and the North Tyneside Systems of the North Eastern Railway were also upgraded in 1904. Furthermore, in 1903 the Metropolitan District Railway started to electrify its lines, followed by the Metropolitan Railway in 1905. But these electrifications, that used a range of different electric systems, were unsuited for the long-distance services that many of the main line companies operated because of their low voltages.[4]

Now, at this point most authors would direct your attention to the fact that the different mainline companies adopted different electrical systems, and indeed they did. The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway started electrifying its suburban network in 1909 using 6,700v ac current supplied from overhead cables. The North Eastern Railway started using 1500v dc current overhead systems on Teesside in 1913. The London and North Western Railway used the London underground’s 4-rail 630v dc system between Watford and Euston, and between Broad Street and Richmond from 1909. The Midland Railway tested 6600v dc systems between Lancashire and Heysham in 1908. Lastly, the L&SWR started to electrify its suburban network in 1912 using third rail 660v ac systems. Thus, by 1923 363 miles of standard gauge line in Britain was electrified using many different systems.[5]

But in a way the minutiae is not important. The important question is why the multiple systems were adopted. By the 1900 most technical aspects of the British railway industry had been standardised through the railway Clearing House (RCH). So, train couplings were the same, accident prevention devices had been formalised, signalling was (mostly) uniform and the height of buffers were all identical. Yet, the railways did not come together to agree a uniform system of electrification. Indeed, this was despite companies having territories, for example those of the southern companies, where their issues regarding declining passenger numbers were almost identical. Indeed, years later the Southern railway, which took over the southern companies, converted all the London, Brighton and South Coast’s overhead electrified systems to the London and South Western’s third rail one.

The reason for this was that the companies, while unified in many respects through the RCH, acted independently in the face of the tram challenge. Because the vast majority of Britain’s railway managers and directors had been working with steam traction throughout their careers, a consensus on what was the best electric system to adopt did not develop within the industry. Therefore, because of their limited experiences and knowledge of electric traction, the result was the haphazard implementation of a hotch-potch of electric systems.

However, the most important question is whether the growth in suburban electric services worked in countering the tram threat before 1923? Nationally the impact cannot be discerned as the majority of passenger trains remained steam hauled. Furthermore, the First World War distorted the figures for the number of passengers conveyed as the railways had unnaturally high usage. Yet, specific figures have been detailed by Colin Chivers for the number of passengers using the L&SWR’ suburban network. Before electrification in 1915 the number of suburban passengers had fallen to 23.3 million. However, by 1920 this had risen to 52.6 million. As Chivers argues ‘an increase of 126% in those five years has to be judged a successful outcome.’[6]

Whether this was repeated elsewhere is unknown, and nationally the number of passengers the railways carried did fall off in the post war period.[7] However, there is clear evidence here that the electrification of commuter lines did improve passenger numbers in those districts. Indeed, after grouping in 1923 the newly formed Southern Railway, who progressively electrified more routes, had consistent passenger traffic growth until 1937. While the northern railway companies continued to be challenged by trams, buses and cars between 1923 and 1937, the number of passengers conveyed by the Southern Railways rose from 236 million to 379 million, a growth of 60.59%.[8] Subsequently, where electrification was applied, the railways remained the dominant form of passenger conveyance until after Work War Two.

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[1] The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 411/415, Personal collection of details of a varying nature covering costs, and information of a general character, p.89

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_steam_rail_motors

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railmotor

[4] Boyes, Grahame, ‘Electrification,’ The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, (Oxford, 1997) p.143

[5] Boyes, ‘Electrification,’ p.143

[6] Chivers, 4 The Riverside Electric, p.164

[7] Munby, D.L. and Watson, A.H.(eds.), Inland Transport Statistics, Great Britain, 1900-1970, (Oxford, 1978) p.100

[8] Moody, G.T., Southern Electric: A history of the world’s greatest suburban electric system, (Shepperton, 1957) p.83-84